This Podcast Will Kill You - Ep 127 Bhopal: The 1984 Union Carbide Disaster

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

On the night of December 2, 1984, a deadly gas leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India led to what has been described as the world’s worst industrial disaster. In the immediate aftermath of the gas leak, thousands of people died and hundreds of thousands were injured from exposure to the toxic gas methyl isocyanate. But long after the international headlines and news reports dwindled to silence, long after Union Carbide paid a paltry settlement to survivors, long after the disaster faded from much of the world’s memory, the gas leak continues to haunt the residents of Bhopal. In this episode, we trace the path of methyl isocyanate from initial discovery to the night of the disaster and the years that followed. We then explore what about this gas makes it so very deadly before assessing how the contamination still present at the site is causing health problems for residents decades after the gas leak. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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than any war story or tragedy they might have read about. What I liked more than anything else about my profession was being able to relieve suffering, Gandhi would say, and there I was unable to do that. It was unbearable. Quite apart from hemorrhaging of the lungs and cataclysmic suffocation, he found himself confronted with symptoms that were unfamiliar to him, cyanosis of the fingers and toes, spasms in the esophagus and intestines, attacks of blindness, muscular convulsions, fevers and sweating so intense that victims wanted to tear off their clothes. Worse of all was the incalculable number of living dead, making for the hospital as if it were a lifeboat in a shipwreck. This is going to be a tough episode to do.

Yeah, definitely. So that was an excerpt from a book called Five Past Midnight in Bhopal, the epic story of the world's deadliest industrial disaster by Dominic LaPierre and Javier Morrow. And hi, I'm Aaron Welsh. And I'm Aaron Alman Updike. And this is, this podcast will kill you. And today, like the book title suggests, we're talking about the Bhopal Gas League, which is one of the most important stories that most of us have probably never heard of. Yeah, I don't think I heard about it until a listener had reached out to us and written in and suggested this as a topic, maybe a couple years ago at this point.

And I jotted it down and then kind of went to the Wikipedia page just to get a feel for it. could not believe that I hadn't heard of it. That is, isn't in every history book, that it's not just something that we know about collectively. Yeah, that's how I felt in researching this. Like, how am I just now learning about this? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we're going to learn a lot today, but first things first. It's quarantini time. Feels weird to be doing this. And it, I mean, it often does. It feels exceptionally weird. in this case. But tradition is tradition. Tradition is tradition. And what are we drinking this week? We're drinking the poisoned chalice. So named because, as you can guess, contamination.

Mm-hmm. Yep. You'll learn more about that later on. But what's in the poison chalice, Aaron? It's a not poison-flavored, delicious little beverage with a shrub that's made from like strawberries and time and then you mix it with gin and lemon juice, maybe some fizzy water. And we'll post the full recipe for that quarantini as well as our non-alcoholic plissy barita on our website, this podcastwickly.com, and all of our social media channels. Now it's website time. You can find lots of stuff on our website from bookshop.org in Goodreads list, from our merch to Patreon, from sources for each and every one of our episodes, transcripts,

There's a lot you can find. Check it out. Check it out. So today's episode is a topic that's a little different than most of our typical episodes. And because of that, we're going to do things in a slightly less than typical order. So Aaron Welsh is going to start out by taking us through the story of the Bhopal gas leak and what actually happened that night and since. And then I will catch us up with what the gas was. that was predominantly leaked and how it affects the body,

and then kind of catch us up to where things stand today. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's a little bit wonky order, but I think that it'll work for this episode. Yeah, it'll make sense, we promise. So should we just get started right after this break? I think so.

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Arranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another and praying your karmic ken or Barbie appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in hoping to find out. love the right way. And instead, I found chaos, cringe, and comedy. And now I'm looking for healing. Boys and Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel, the meat-awquard,

the near-misses, the heartbreak, and let's not forget all the jokes. Listen to boys and girls on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We humans have been waging a war against insects and arthropods for millennia. They eat our grain, our corn, our rice, our potatoes. They transmit diseases to us and to our domestic animals. And even if their actions don't result in outright devastation, as they often do, they can simply be annoying. Over the centuries, we've tried everything from prayer, rituals, and spells to selective breeding, physical removal, and more recently, chemical applications like arsenic. copper sulfate, DDT, and 7.

Anyone who comes up with a successful solution is handsomely rewarded with scientific prizes and gobs of money, and any company that manufactures that solution is certainly going to get their own share of riches. The development and use of these pesticides has truly revolutionized our world. It has prevented famines, increased food security, enabled food production. where it had previously been impossible, saved countless lives by decreasing arthropod-borne diseases like malaria. It has so often been a tool for good. But of course, the consequences of pesticide use are not all positive. Ecological cascades, die-offs of already endangered animals, long-term contamination

of groundwater, untold and sometimes inadequately measured health. effects on humans. It's definitely a tread carefully kind of situation, and even treading carefully may not save you from the negative impacts that only make themselves known later on. But this is not a story about pesticides and the use of pesticides and weighing sort of the good and the bad. It's a story about the manufacture of them, of one of them in particular. And like so many stories about pesticides, this story features themes familiar to listeners of the podcast. Corporate negligence, the disregard of human health and human life, cutting corners to save a few bucks while eliminating safety features, a complete lack of consequences for those responsible,

and the lingering devastation no longer seen as headline worthy that is still around today even decades after the problem first arose. Yeah. This is a difficult story to tell because I don't think that my 30 or 40 or maybe even 50 minute telling can really do it justice. And it's also a difficult story to hear. There is no shortage of suffering and death and injustice. And I recognize that many people might not feel like that's something they can be around right now. And so if that is the case for you, I might recommend saving this episode for a later date.

All right, here we go. By the 1960s, the U.S. industrial company Union Carbide was a household name. If you went to the grocery store, your groceries were most likely going to be packed up in Union Carbide plastic bags. Any plastic bottle you took home? Probably made by the company. Food packaging. Film for cameras. Any number of common household items was manufactured by Union Carbide, and their products extended

far beyond trash bags, telephone wire, antifreeze, batteries, rubber, synthetic diamonds, metallurgical items used in airplane turbines, industrial gases like nitrogen, methane, and propane, ammonia, and urea for use in fertilizers. I think it's hard to overstate the enormous, absolutely enormous range of chemicals and products produced by Union Carbide. Wow. And the scale at which they mined and processed and produced in order to supply the world, the entire globe, with their goods. Wow.

One of these products was a pesticide called 7, which is shortened from experimental insecticide 7-7, and it's spelled, by the way, S-E-V-I-N. And this was developed in 1957. Seven, Union Carbide claimed in its widely distributed pamphlets, was the answer to everything. Everything. A true silver bullet insecticide. Not only did it protect nearly every crop you could think of from nearly every species of arthropod you could think of, it also killed those insects that had developed resistance to other popular pesticides of the day, and could be used around the house

to killed mosquitoes and roaches, as well as on pets to eliminate fleas, lice, and ticks. And it did all of this without harming humans, with proof given in the form of a photograph where one of Seven's developers can be seen licking some granules of the substance. I'm sorry. No. I haven't actually seen the picture, but that's how it was described in the book. But yeah, that was sort of like, Seven is so safe. Whether or not Seven in its final stage is truly non-toxic to humans, I don't know. I found a couple of papers from the 1960s that didn't appear, at least a surface level, to be funded directly by Union Carbide that reported low toxicity to the mammals that they tested. But there was some toxicity to crustaceans and fish. Okay. But this story isn't even about seven.

One of the intermediate chemicals used to make seven is outrageously toxic. And this is necessary for seven's production, right? So if Union Carbide wants to sell lots and lots of seven, which of course they did, they have to make lots and lots of this stuff. So basically to make seven, you put some chemicals together. You get a new chemical out of that called methyl isosyanate. This is the thing that we're interested in. And you add another chemical, and then boom, you get seven.

So part of getting seven ready for widespread production involved testing these various steps to see what safety precautions you needed. Do you need gloves? Do you need a chemical hood for this step? you need a respirator, so on. Well, methyl isocyanate needed all of it. Quote, when toxicologists had it tested on rats, the results were so terrifying that the company banned their publication. Other experiments had shown that animals exposed to MIC vapors alone

died almost instantaneously. So, and, quote. quote, yeah. I, okay, I, I, I'm just listening so intently because I obviously read a lot about methyl isosionate and I read very, I tried to read very little about the actual story itself. So I'm, but I know a little and so I'm really very curious how, how I just want, I want you to keep going. Like, like, why? Like, I don't want to spoilers, but like how things got to where they got to because like yeah oh yeah it's there is no there is an explanation but there is no logic to it and there's no oh yeah that makes sense every decision many layers of decisions that were not

in the interest of human health okay okay yeah and so this was like early on this was sort of like okay, we found this pesticide. Now can we scale up its production and make this like a viable product for global distribution? And so that was why they were testing these various steps. And somehow these results didn't scare off the company from making it. They're like, you know, it's fine. There were even some toxicologists in Germany who decided to enlist to the help of quote unquote voluntary human guinea pigs. to see what level of exposure to MIC was harmful.

It didn't take very much, as you could guess. Uh-huh. Uh-huh, yeah. Making it even worse was the volatility of methyl isosyanate. If it comes into contact with a bit of water or some metal particles, it would undergo a powerful reaction resulting in a fatally poisonous cloud of gas, that would severely injure, burn, blind you if it didn't just kill you outright. This was all known.

With this information in hand, they're like, okay, well, we can just make regulations around that to protect the workers that are working with this. You know, like, we have to store it at a temperature close to freezing so that it doesn't explode. and there have to be a lot of safety backups in case something did happen, like a leak or if water got in or some other contaminant. The manual that Union Carbide wrote describing methyl isosionate said that it could be fatal if inhaled, it could cause severe chest pains and pulmonary edema, and that a vehicle that was transporting this highly volatile stuff needed to take. take back roads and go far around towns and cities. If there was a leak, you have to just hit the gas, drive to the middle of nowhere, and get out. Oh my goodness. This is so horrific. It's, yep. Can I ask a question, but I don't want to like jump ahead if you're going to talk about this? Yeah, yeah. One of the things that I read about one of the ways that all of these things

could have failed to lead to the thing that's about to happen, was that because MIC is essentially an intermediate product, that it didn't have to undergo the same level of safety testing as like an end product, is that, but it sounds like they knew a lot more than I realized. Yeah, the health effects and the extreme risk that MIC posed was well known. Okay. Wow. Yeah. there's there's more i'm just going yeah yeah keep going um and so they had these regulations about like storage about transportation about fail safe stuff like that because they knew that if there was a leak if there was a release of this deadly gas cloud that it could harm or kill anyone who breathed it so you're putting not only those who worked near it at risk but

anyone who lived near it was produced or held or transported. So it was known just how deadly the substance could be. But M. I.C. could also make Union carbide so much money. So you just got to overlook that, right? The trick was just figuring out where to put a factory to produce this stuff so that you could make the end product that everyone actually cared about. Seven. The first of these factories was in West Virginia. On the banks of the Canawa River, I hope I'm saying that right, I apologize if I'm not, outside Charleston. The second factory would be in Bhopal, in the heart of India. The location for the second factory was not chosen at random.

Union Carbide had long established links with the country, with 14 factories producing chemicals, plastic goods, film, laminated glass, batteries, and machine tools, among other things. And pesticide production seemed like a natural next step, given the food shortages caused in part by crop pests that had occurred in the 1960s in India. Not only would the factory create loads of jobs, it would also make affordable pesticide readily available. Plus, Bhopal was centrally located in the middle of India and was connected to other cities by well-maintained roads and a railway system. Hmm. It's great, right?

Plans to produce 5,000 tons of 7 were immediately drawn up and approved. But in order to manufacture that quantity, that enormous quantity of 7, the factory would have to first produce and store an enormous. amount of MIC. The West Virginia factory was already doing this, but that factory was operational 24-7, so it was producing seven around the clock, and it was connected to other union carbide plants. And so there was a lot more monitoring constantly that was going on. Okay. Even though it was also located relatively close to Charleston, where lots of people lived,

the factory in Bhopal would be much smaller. It would only produce as needed, and it would be staffed by fewer people compared to the West Virginia factory. That meant that the 22,000 to 26,000 gallons of MIC would be stored for longer periods of time because you couldn't produce as much as fast and would not be able to be monitored as regularly.

just yep already seeing some flaws here oh yeah one of the project leaders was concerned about the risks of such a factory and so he consulted with some experts who told him we only produce our methyl isosyanate as needed we'd never risk keeping a single leader for more than 10 minutes a single leader and so they're talking about storing tens of thousands of gallons on site okay Another person said, quote, your engineers are out of their minds. They're putting an atomic bomb in the middle of your factory that could explode at any time. End quote. And this is before they built the factory. Yes. I think at this point they were making seven, but they weren't manufacturing MIC or even storing it there yet. So they were making plans to do this. Okay. The French government had prohibited MIC being stocked in any quantity larger than 20 gallon drums.

Meanwhile, for the Bhopal factory, they had plans for three tanks, each of which could house 10 to 20,000, like 18,000 gallons of MIC, each one. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Union carbide wasn't concerned about this. There's a quote, you have absolutely no need to worry. Your bopal plant will be as inoffensive as a chocolate factory, end quote. Uh-huh. I could almost buy this overconfidence, or whatever it is, if Union Carbide had never experienced an industrial accident.

But they were certainly no stranger to them, especially those where proper safety or containment protocols were not implemented, and adequate safety gear not provided. Silicosis deaths in hundreds of employees at a West Virginia mine in the 1930s, residents living in areas south of West Virginia factories developing cancerous tumors at twice the rate of the national average, asbestos mining in California through the 1980s, and maybe beyond, leading to mesothelioma and other asbestos-related disease in many employees, widespread contamination of groundwater and soil with pesticides and herbicides in Australia and many other places where they had their plants and mined for decades. But Union Carbide seemed to take these incidents

in stride. They weren't going to let a few pesky cases of cancer or ecological devastation stop them from conducting business the way they wanted. But local regulations in India prohibited any industry that produced toxic emissions be set up near densely populated areas. Under this regulation, that factory proposed to be built in Bhopal should not have been allowed, right? Because you're producing toxic emissions. Wrong. That regulation could only be enforced if you admitted to the presence of toxic gas in your building application, which Union Carbide took great pains to conceal. They did not indicate that they would be storing the incredibly deadly methyl isosyanate on factory grounds next door to the hundreds of thousands of residents of Bhopal. And is that like they were like wordsmithing it?

Because like, oh, seven, I licked it. It's not toxic. That's what we're producing. That's my guess. Yeah. That's my guess. Yeah. It's like technically, if we, if we're containing.

M-I-C, there is no toxic emissions. Yeah, right. So it's, I mean, it's a lie of omission, I guess. I don't know the documentation precisely, but... Okay. Construction on the factory began in 1972, as planned. And at first, the thousands of gallons, the tens of thousands of gallons of M-I-C, that were needed weren't produced on site but had to be transported over 500 miles to where the factory was,

which was extremely dangerous, right? The boiling point of MIC is 39 degrees Celsius, which is not very hot. And so on hot days, there was always the worry of explosion, not to mention like, what if there was a car accident? But after six years of this transportation, the equipment to produce and store MIC on site, 120 tons of methyl isosionate, enough methyl isosionate to poison half of Bhopal, was finally finished on May 4, 1980. Of course, MIC was not the only dangerous substance to be in ample supply at the factory in Bhopal. There were early signs of water pollution, like extreme and deadly contamination, where cows died, the water smelled bad and was weirdly colored. But allegedly nothing was done about it besides compensation for the cows.

There were safety measures in place for a potential MIC leak. So there was a siren and loudspeakers that would announce a leak and order evacuation. There was a wind sock that would show which direction the gas would be blowing. There were drills that were regularly practiced, safety equipment that could be used to revive a few people if they had been exposed, safety posters, as well as equipment-specific fail-safes that were supposed to provide multiple layers of protection or at least a warning in case of a leak. And I'll get more into those in a bit. But these safety measures applied only to the factory and those working there. There was no plan for how to inform Bhopal's residence of a fire or a toxic leak at the factory. The sirens and the instructions from the loudspeakers, they didn't travel very far.

And so maybe some people on the edge could hear the sirens, but like in terms of, you know, evacuate the area, there's a toxic leak. No. Oh. Mm-hmm. Okay. And when the lead engineer at the factory asked for help from local authorities to at least get people to move farther from the factory grounds, the local authorities refused because they were worried that people would leave and elections were coming up. Okay. Throughout the first few years of full operation, factory operators had several opportunities to test out these new sales.

safety measures and patch any holes they found, figuratively and literally. In 1982, an employee got a few drops of MIC on his sweater when he was doing a repair. He immediately hopped into the shower and rinsed off, but he took off his gas mask prematurely, and when the water had hit the MIS on his sweater, it created this cloud of toxic gas, and he died a few days later. Oh, no. Yeah. Not too long after this, just a few months, 25 workers were poisoned from a leaky fosgene pump. They all survived, but even this was not enough of a wake-up call because about eight months later, a huge cloud of MIC vapors escaped after some pipes failed. The sirens went off and everyone was ordered to evacuate the factory, but Bhopal's residents who could hear the siren had no idea what to do or if they

should worry. Is it just a drill or is this irregular? Huh. Fortunately, the gas dissipated before it could reach their homes and no one was injured in that particular instance. But still, like, you would hope that these near misses and a death, yeah, would inspire someone to look around and go, I think that we need to maybe make this safe for everyone. Like, we're not doing a good enough job here. But no. But no. No, at least no one in charge. There was a journalist who toured the factory after that person had died of MIC exposure,

and he was hit with like the smells of chemicals, which I feel like that indicates that something is not right. Like you shouldn't be smelling these toxic chemicals. There was like the odor of fosgene, which smells apparently like freshly cut grass, and methyl isosyanate, which smells. of boiled cabbage, I've seen it described. And this journalist investigated these chemicals further and grew even more horrified by what he found. Quote, merely appreciating that methyl isocyanate and fosgene

are two and a half times heavier than air and have a tendency to move along at ground level in small clouds was enough to make me realize at once that a large scale gas leak would be disastrous. After detailed examination of the safety systems in place in the plant, I knew that tragedy was only a matter of time. Oh, end quote. Yeah. And he published his concerns in local newspapers with headlines like, Bo Paul, we are sitting on a volcano, and if you refuse to understand, you will be reduced to dust, to no avail. An internal audit of the safety of the factory found over 60-60 breaches of operational and safety regulations.

A lack of pressure gauges. Positioning of equipment that could trap people in case of a leak. No sprinklers. Rupures in pipework. Turnover of staff and improper training. I mean, the list truly goes on and on. Oh no. Uh-huh. But again, no meaningful change. was made. If anything, the situation grew worse because Union Carbide's business wasn't doing well. The factory and seven wasn't performing, as they had hoped. Widespread drought throughout the region meant that there was no point in applying pesticides to plants that weren't growing. And many people had just stopped buying pesticide altogether because it was effective for just such a short period of time. The amount of seven sold was half of production capacity and dropping drastically every year.

Oh, no. And the newly appointed director of the plant, who I think was appointed in early 1984, who had zero experience managing a chemical factory, by the way, made extreme cuts to try to reduce losses. Personnel reduced nearly half. Skilled personnel were placed with less expensive, untransed, trained personnel, fewer quality control checks, fewer maintenance procedures, replacing parts less often, replacing parts with cheaper versions, not replacing parts at all. Just every single corner that you could think of, just like imagine a thing that has lots of corners and cut every single one of those corners right off. It's just a circle. Yeah. And when that wasn't enough, when those cuts redeemed not good enough, management decided that the factory would go into operation on an as-needed

basis. And since it was only as-needed, then all of the principal safety systems could be shut down unless the factory was up and running. Because it's not like an accident could happen if the factory wasn't operating, right? Oh, no. Wrong. Obviously. That's why we're doing this episode. One of those safety systems that had been shut down included the refrigeration of the 60 tons of methyl isosyanate that was still sitting in the tanks, which was supposed to be kept at zero degrees Celsius. The cost cutting also put out the flame

that burned day and night to burn off any toxic gas that escaped, saved a few bucks on coal expenses, and the deactivation of an enormous scrubber cylinder that was meant to decontaminate gas leaks also saved the company some money. But it wasn't enough. In August 1984, Union Carbide wrote off the plant entirely and made plans for its liquidation. That meant no more repairs or replacements. and the factory fell into more and more disrepair by the time December 1984 rolled around.

At this point, the only remaining safety device for the methyl isosyanate tanks was the windsock that would show which direction any toxic gas cloud headed. That's it. With the refrigeration off, the MIC in the tanks was reaching the December ambient temperature of 20 degrees Celsius. And even more concerning, the 63 tons of methyl isocyanate still at the plant was not evenly distributed among these three tanks. One tank held 42 tons, which was almost full, against regulation, because they were supposed to be. to be left about 50% full and then held in place with inert nitrogen so that in case there was a chemical reaction that started, you could inject a solvent and have enough room in there to

house that solvent to stop to shut down that reaction. Okay. But if it's full, you can't, there's no space for that solvent. You can't do that. Another tank that was supposed to be left empty in case of an emergency, like in case like, oh, we have too much in one tank. We need to offload. Yep. That had a ton of MIC already in it. None of these tanks had been inspected since at least October, like for two months, which was when production shut down entirely. An MIC, as we have emphasized, is not an inert substance. If all this wasn't enough, the pressurization system on the tanks was broken. So instead of keeping that MIC from moving or expanding or anything else from escaping in there because of it's pressurized, nothing can come in.

That pressurization was broken. And so contaminants could get into these tanks with no resistance at all. And if contamination got into the tanks, that would trigger a massive chemical reaction. And so this ticking time bomb of a factory sat outside the unsuspecting city of Bullpaw on the night of Sunday, December 2nd, 1984. But before I go into the details of that night, let's just take a little bit of a break here. Yeah. And we'll be back in a few. Anyone who works long hours knows the routine.

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Moisturization that lasts up to 48 hours. It's made for people whose hands take a beating at work, from health care and food service to salon, lab, and caregiving environments. It's been relied on for decades by people who wash their hands constantly or work in harsh conditions because it actually works. O'Keefs is my hand cream of choice in these dry Colorado winters when it feels like my skin is always on the verge of cracking. It keeps them soft and smooth, no matter how harsh it is outside.

We're offering our listeners 15% off their first order of O'Keefs. Just visit O'Keefscom. This Podcast and code this podcast at checkout. Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police. Welcome to Boys and Girls, the podcast where dating isn't dating. Arranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another,

and praying your karmic Ken or Barbie appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this. ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in, hoping to find love the right way, and instead I found chaos, cringe, and comedy. And now, I'm looking for healing. Boys and Girls dives into every twist and turn of the arranged marriage carousel,

the meat-awquard, the near-misses, the heartbreak, and let's not forget all the jokes. Listen to boys and girls on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, We've got some incredible guests like Kumail Nanjiani. Let's start with your cat. How is she?

She is not with a thing. Okay, great, great, great way to start. So this is a great beginning and hopefully you'll be able to, I don't know, maybe you will cry. Amanda Seifred. Life is so short. If you feel something like that, you have that fire in you for this experience. It's not for a guy. It's for the experience of being in love and like it's bigger than a guy.

Elizabeth Olson. I love swimming naked so much. much. And I know you love taking pictures of yourself naked. I love to be naked. I just want to be in my brown underwear all the time. Ross Matthews. You know what kids always say to me? Are you a boy or girl? Oh my God. That's so funny. I know. So I'm always like, hi. I try to butcher it up for kids, you know, so they're not confused. Yeah, but you're butching it up is basically like Doris Day. Right? No, I turn into Be Arthur. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Where I left off was talking about this ticking time bomb of a factory that sat outside Bhopal on the night of Sunday, December 2nd, 1984. That Sunday was not a typical Sunday for Bhopal. It marked the beginning of the celebration of Ishtama, a prayer gathering that brought thousands of people from all over the country to Bhopal, increasing the city's population. to enormous numbers, close to a million people in one estimate. Celebrations were in full swing in town, while at the factory only about 120 people remained on site, mostly just keeping an eye on things and doing some light maintenance, like flushing

out the pipes connected to the MIC storage tanks. Oh, no. And this flushing was important to make sure that there were no contaminants going into the MIC tanks, right? Uh-huh. And the flushing seemed to go okay, except for one drainage pipe that wasn't draining. And the guy doing the flushing was like, this doesn't seem right. And so he went to ask his supervisor to come and take a look because he was worried that like,

okay, if I'm not seeing this water being flushed out, where is it going? Is it going somewhere it shouldn't be going? The supervisor was like, ugh, it's fine. Don't worry about it. It's relax. and it appeared to be fine for, I don't know exactly how long, but for a chunk of time, like nothing seemed to result. Until close to midnight, when the smell of boiled cabbage began to fill the factory, the water that was supposed to come out of that rinse pipe during the flushing had instead gone into the tank that was almost full,

that contained 42 tons of methyl isosyanate. And the water, which is a problem alone, because it reacts with methyl isosionate, it wasn't just pure water. It brought with it debris, sodium chloride crystals, and many other impurities. And the introduction of this contaminated water set off an explosive reaction.

At five minutes, past midnight, on December 3rd, 1984, geysers of methyl isocyanate erupted from the tank, filling the air with a cloud of deadly gas 100 yards wide and heavier than air, which, according to the windsock, the lone remaining safety device, was headed directly to town, as well as the train station, where hundreds of people waited. The factory siren could barely be heard over the celebrations or while people were sleeping. But there was no context or explanation given even if you could hear the siren. Like, was this a drill? Was this anything to worry about? And after 10 minutes, it went silent, which people took to mean that it was probably just a drill and that was no real

danger. But really, the siren had recently been adjusted to do that, to ring for 10 minutes and then switched to a quieter one that was heard only within factory grounds so that instructions could be more clearly heard through the loudspeaker. Okay. Yeah. And so people at the factory had already, whoever could had already abandoned. They had run as far and as fast as they could away from this. And any relief that people felt after hearing that alarm go silent in Bhopal,

it didn't last for long because the smell of boiled cabbage soon found its way into the city. The pungent air swept through wedding celebrations, through homes with newly born babies, through the bustling markets, through fields of cows, through the crowded train station, through the open windows of bedrooms with unsuspecting sleepers. Everywhere the gas cloud reached, it left death and destruction in its wake. If in your first breath you caught the scent of cabbage, the second one was likely to leave you gasping, choking, coughing. People died where they stood, where they slept, where they danced, and especially while they ran, as they breathed more and more of the toxic gas in, faster and deeper. The noisy

streets were filled at first with panicked shouts and cries, and then with horrible coughing as more and more people, dogs and cows, collapsed from the poisonous gas that had flooded their lungs. trains packed full of hundreds of passengers continued to arrive at the station where the deadly gas had settled with the platform already filled with the bodies of the poisoned. If you fell, there was most likely no getting up since the heavy cloud settled close to the ground, displacing any breathable air. There seemed to be no escape from this horror, which was a horror beyond comprehension, I guess. I can not comprehend it. And there was no guidance or even answers, like an explanation, anything as to what was happening. Only a few people knew about the explosion at the factory, and so no one could take steps to

protect themselves or their family or anyone else from the gas. And how would you even go about doing that anyway? there had been no contingency plan for something like this. And while this was happening, while this gas was spreading through the town, there didn't seem to be any attempt to make people aware, only to conceal what exactly was happening. Physicians who were at the rapidly filling hospitals tried to call local authorities to figure out like, okay, what poison are we dealing with so we can at least treat appropriately or administer an antidote if one. exists, but they were told flat out lies, or at least a watered-down version of the truth. They were told it was not methyl isosinate, but something else, like ammonia poisoning. They were told that it was, oh, just a few inconsequential poisonings.

Nothing really serious. A few damp compresses and everything should be all right. Not a deadly gas, just irritating, a sort of tear gas, just give them some water to drink and rinse their eyes with. And that one, that last one, came from Union Carbide's doctor. Oh, no. Oh, no. These descriptions, nothing really serious, just a few inconsequential poisonings, this did not match at all with what the doctors were seeing at the hospitals where dozens of people lay dead and dying along the hallways. But even knowing that it was methyl isosyanate didn't help the doctors who had not.

never heard of the stuff. They did the best they could, providing water or oxygen or cardiac massage or a few drops of atropine and a damp cotton pad for the horrific eye injuries that people were coming in with. But they were too late. They couldn't have gotten there early enough. And on the morning of December 3rd, the sun rose over a city that had been completely transformed. by tragedy and chaos. Bodies of people and cows and dogs, anything that breathed, filled the streets. The official death toll for that first night

stands at around 3,800. From the first night? From the first night. And there are other estimates because there was not a very comprehensive tally made, which would have been nearly impossible to do so just with everything that was going on. And so there are other estimates that put the number of people killed that first night and over the next few days at 10,000, 15,000, even 20,000 people.

And that's not even taking into account the number of people injured some permanently that night and the countless health effects that they experience later on, which number more than a half a million people in total. And it doesn't also take into account the contamination that remains at the site of the factory to this day, still making people sick. As cleanup began in the days after the explosion, cleanup, by the way, not of the poison, but of the bodies of those who had died. Bhopal's surviving residents demanded answers. How had this happened? Who was responsible? and why had no one been warned? The CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson.

I already hate it so much. I know. Yeah. I mean, it just doesn't get better. Like, this is a horrible story through and through. So Warren Anderson at first seemed to be prepared to take some responsibility, to communicate transparently with the press, and to provide financial aid to those affected by.

the explosion. But he quickly changed his tune when he arrived in India and was arrested. I think he wanted to be hailed as like the hero who was going to come in with like clean up funds and stuff like that. Okay. There is some speculation that his arrest was largely symbolic anyway because his bail was set at like $2,000 and there were more than a few government officials involved in the explosion or at least in like shoving these safety issues under the rug. But in any case, case, there was no more playing nice for Warren Anderson. Anyone outside of Union Carbide was forbidden entry to the factory and forbidden access to any documents that would give some clue as to what had happened. And Union Carbide began peddling a story that the explosion was

intentional, orchestrated by a disgruntled worker bent on sabotage. And so this was so that the company wasn't responsible. The company wasn't at fault. No, it was just this disgruntled worker. Just one dude. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It was only through the work of independent investigators that the true story came to light.

One investigator found a Union Carbide Internal Report written just months before the Bhopal disaster that described a hypothetical scenario that could happen at the West Virginia plant, which was very similar to the Bhopal plant. in which a quote-unquote runaway reaction involving methyl isocyanate could happen and the horrible tragedy that could result. This was just a few months before this happened. Even with this documentation clearly demonstrating that the company itself, not some lone disgruntled worker, was responsible for this disaster through negligence

and the prioritization of profit over human lives, Union Carbide fought tooth and nail against these allegations. Ultimately, in 1989, five years after the disaster, the company agreed to settle for $470 million, which was six times less than the $3 billion that the Indian government had initially demanded, and they settled on the basis that no further charges could be made, and that cleanup was not required to take place. They didn't have to clean up anything. 500,000 people affected.

It's just, I can't. Yeah. Yep. I think when all was said and done, it came down to the equivalent of $600 U.S. dollars for each of those roughly 550,000 survivors affected by the explosion. And it was years before anyone actually received any of this money.

and even then they often ended up breaking even or nearly even because they had to pay for legal fees and for forms to certify that they were owed this money like death certificates or medical forms or like no I swear I was there it's like yeah but like can you prove it's wow mm-hmm union carbide CEO Warren Anderson retired quietly and lived out the rest of his life peacefully at least as far as I can tell with the The arrest warrant from the Indian government never served to him. The company never recovered from the bad press of the Bhopal tragedy and the leaks that happened in 1985 in their West Virginia plant that ended up poisoning some workers. And in 1999, Union Carbide was sold to Dow Chemical Group.

Dow immediately washed its hands of the Bhopal disaster with CEO Frank Popoff declaring that, quote, it is not in my power to take responsibility for an event which happened 15 years ago with a product we never developed at a location where we never operated. So even though technically they own the factory and the factory grounds, I assume, I don't know if that's the case. They're not responsible for the cleanup. Nope. And so that's the justification that they used to let the plant in Bhopal continue to sit there, decaying, contaminating the water and soil and making a whole new generation sick.

And in one night, Union Carbide erased the rich cultural history of Bhopal, turning it into a city with one identity, that of poisoning and suffering, not talking about, you know, the art and the poetry and the music and anything that is so unique and wonderful from this. region. It's now Bhopal is just Bhopal disaster. That was something that I kept coming back to. Like, why isn't this called the Union Carbide disaster? Like, this is the Union Carbide leak. And one single paper that I read referred to it as such. And all of the rest of them don't. And it very much feels like how you're not supposed to name a disease after a place. Like, why are we naming this after the place and not the company who did this? Yeah. Like, this is the. the Union Carbide leak. Maybe it's because there were so many Union Carbite industrial disasters

that you have to specify in another way. This is the 1984 Union Carbide disaster. Yeah. Yeah. It's horrific. It's so horrific. It's, it is so horrific. And I think for listeners of the podcast, this story is a sadly familiar one. Profits over human health. Companies withholding vital information that prevented people from making informed decisions, learning about the health effects of substances because of illegal or at least unethical exposures via corporate negligence. It's just ring so many bells that we have wrung before or something.

Yeah. But yeah, I mean, despite how familiar this story may be, at least thematically, I can't believe that it's not more widely known, especially given that it's not over. Right. The 1984 Union Carbide disaster is still affecting hundreds of thousands of people today, which is my cue to turn it over to you, Erin, to take us through exactly what this methyl isosyanate does to us and how we're still dealing with its effects. I will do my best to do so after a short break.

Erin, you took us through what happened during the Union Carbide Gas leak in 1984. So now the question that I want to answer is, what the heck is Mick or methyl isosionate? Yeah. And what was happening to the people who lived in Bhopal that night? And of course, what is still happening today. So to get at all of those questions, we're first going to focus on Mick, methyl isosionate. This is the gas that was predominantly involved in this leak. And I say predominantly because, as you mentioned, Aaron,

there was not only just more than this one chemical present in the factory, but because of how reactive methyl isosycinate is, it's difficult to quantify exactly what else individuals could have been exposed to. So it's very likely that during the process of the leak and thereafter, residents were exposed to a number of other harms besides just methyl isosionate. Just pick your poison. Right. But for the sake of simplicity and because the vast majority of papers focused on this, we'll focus on Mick today.

We've picked our poison. Exactly. So let's first define what the heck substance we're actually talking about. Isosionates are chemicals that are a nitrogen, double bonded to a carbon, double bonded to an oxygen. They have an NCO group. Okay. These groups themselves are highly reactive. And they're used as intermediates in a lot of different manufacturing processes, including

making foam, plastics, adhesives, pesticides, paints, a whole bunch of different things. And there are a lot of different types of isosionates. There are dye isosionates that have two of these NCO groups. And there are mono-isocyanates, which have just one. All of these compounds cause some degree of toxicity and especially pulmonary or lung toxicity. The one primarily involved in the disaster apopal was methyl isosionate. So that means an NCO group attached to just a plenal methyl group, which is a carbon and three hydrogens. Okay.

So that makes this one of, if not the smallest of these isosionate compounds. and as we now know, the most reactive and the most toxic of the isosionates. So Mick, as I'll call it for probably the rest of this episode, is a colorless liquid that is incredibly flammable, as you mentioned, Aaron, and very easily evaporates when it's exposed to air. It has an incredibly high vapor pressure, so it's very easily vaporized. And the vapors, as the liquid, are incredibly toxic. And you mentioned a lot of times, Aaron, this very pungent odor. Mm-hmm. But it turns out that the concentration at which the odor is detectable is actually far above the threshold at which it can begin to cause damage.

So it's causing damage before you even know that you're being experienced. exposed to it. This is called having poor warning properties, which makes a toxic compound even more dangerous. Yep. And as we kind of alluded to during your section, Erin, because Mick was used as what's called a captive intermediate in a, quote, closed production process, it wasn't as thoroughly evaluated in terms of the potential health effects on humans as other chemicals may have been. except as we learned, Union Carbide did plenty of work on this and hit it. But in any case, it wasn't until after this absolute catastrophe that the scientific community at large really started studying in detail the potential health effects. And as we'll see, we still fall woefully short.

So to recap, on that night in December of 1984, it's estimated that 30 to 40 times. tons of Mick, that's over 25,000 kilograms of Mick, as well as 12,800 kilograms of other reaction products were released. And what likely happened when that water entered the storage tank, it caused an exothermic reaction that generated a lot of heat and eventually the explosion that led to this leak. And while, as you mentioned, the estimates vary widely. By morning, thousands of people and animals were dead, and thousands more were streaming into local hospitals.

It's estimated that over the next few days, and that part is important, over the next few days, tens of thousands of people likely died. And estimates continue that likely an additional 15 to 20,000. if not more, premature deaths happened over the next few decades, and 500,000 people were exposed, which means that we don't even know how big the effects could be. And we'll get there. So let's go over what was happening to people who were exposed on that night. What were these acute health effects that we see from exposure to Mick? There are three major body systems that are affected with exposure to Mick, we now know.

But this is something that affected people throughout their entire body, like every organ system. But the two most noticeable up top were the eyes and the lungs. And very shortly thereafter, we found it also causes significant damage to the reproductive system. Right. So let's talk about it. Acutely, with the eyes, it was severe watering of the eyes, like profuse,

profuse watering, photophobia, like not being able to open your eyes and look at light because of extreme pain, and very significant edema and swelling of the lids. The kinds of symptoms that you might think you'd experience if you got a very caustic chemical or chemical vapor into your eyes. All of this would have been incredibly painful. And slit lamp examinations, which is when you can take a look actually into the eye itself showed ulcerations of the cornea. And over time, over weeks, this progressed into re-epithelization. So basically, this cornea had been damaged enough that it had to have new growth. The cells of the eyes had to grow anew. Now, the good news is that almost every report that I read suggested that the long-term damage to the eyes

was likely very minimal. There are some studies that suggested that people had long-term issues with like recurrent eye infections and excessive watering, but no long-term blindness or irreversible damage to the eyes, as far as we know, based on this incident. Okay. But the acute damage was significant. The most damaging, however, was to the respiratory tract. And this is what caused the deaths of so many thousands of people.

The damage to the respiratory tract was by far the most significant. And the descriptions are honestly a little too horrific to like go in in detail. Yeah. But exposure to high concentrations of this vapor, of this gas, would have resulted in restlessness, nose and throat pain, difficulty breathing. and essentially an acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS, which we've talked about a little bit on this podcast before, but it is essentially what happens when you just can't breathe anymore because your lungs are filling up with fluid. And what we see in the autopsy and the pathology reports is complete destruction of the lung tissue itself.

people who died from Mick, their lungs weighed two to three times as much as a typical lung would have weighed because of how full of fluid they became. This fluid was a combination of hemorrhage, just bleeding, and also necrosis, tissue death, and lots of inflammatory fluid and cell infiltrates from people's bodies trying as best they could to do something about these vapors. that they were being exposed to. It's horrific. In the slightly more longer term, like in the next few weeks and months, it also became very evident that there was significant effects on the reproductive system. Almost half of pregnant people who were exposed, at least who were able to be followed, during this incident, did not give birth to live babies.

That was the spontaneous abortion rate of three times as high as they were. estimated incidents in that same area prior to this event. Oh my God. And in a cohort that was able to be followed thereafter, the neonatal death rate was 15% compared to 2% to 3% in that same population in previous years. Oh, my God. Yeah. Additionally, there were significant birth anomalies, including spina bifida, limb deformities,

heart disease, lung disease, even in infants who did survive. And then of course there are reports, especially from kind of the night of and in the days that followed, of a lot of other possible effects. Neurologic symptoms like seizures, loss of consciousness, muscle weakness, or spasms, nausea and vomiting from damage to the GI tract. Like every possible organ system could be and likely was affected in some individuals by this event. And that's because, as I'm about to get into, methyl isosyanate essentially just ripped through people's bodies. So how did this happen? How does this happen? What does this chemical actually do?

It's very disappointing to say that we don't have a detailed answer. Like, in our episodes where we've covered other chemicals or heavy metals, like in lead and in mercury, I was able to give quite a lot of cellular level detail of like what is this thing doing in our bodies and how does it make us sick the way that it does. Right. This event, despite killing so many thousands of people and affecting so many hundreds of thousands more, we still don't quite know what Mick is doing inside of our bodies. There are two main hypotheses and both of these likely played roles. and their effect sizes likely differ significantly based on the concentration of gas to which someone is exposed. The first is the most straightforward and easy to understand and what likely happened to the people who died that night and in the days thereafter.

And that is that this is a chemical that is ripping through ourselves. Because this compound is so incredibly reactive and it's incredibly reactive with water, of which our bodies are mostly made, the reaction that Mick produces with water is exothermic and it generates heat. So whenever it's coming into contact with our mucous membranes, our wet, wet bodies and our water-filled cells, it's liberating heat and physically destroying our tissues. So that is one main way, and likely, as I said, the culprit of a lot of the acute symptoms, like the excessive watering of the eyes, eye pain, throat pain, the difficulty breathing. This is a chemical irritant that's just breaking open and killing the cells of our mucous membranes, of our lungs, of our GI tract, anywhere that it's getting to, right? So that could account for a lot of the respiratory symptoms and a lot of those initials.

deaths. And one thing that I think is important because when this event first happened, there was a lot of, like you said, confusion, what was the chemical that was causing this? And there was some thought that could it be hydrogen cyanide. So cyanide, or CN instead of an N-CO, and hydrogen cyanide specifically, which is just hydrogen and a cyanide group, is an extreme. toxic compound, though as it turns out, methyl isosycinate is far more toxic per concentration than cyanide. Okay. My God.

But this is something that is, in fact, generated in some reactions from methyl isosyanate. So it was hypothesized that maybe it was cyanide that was the main culprit and not Mick. But one important part of this story is that many of the deaths happened. in the coming days after the initial explosion. And cyanide poisoning happens in a matter of minutes. Right. When people are poisoned with cyanide, as we learned in our Tylenol episode, they die within minutes to hours.

It's very rapid because the way that cyanide kills is by shutting off one of the enzymes that allows us to use the oxygen that we breathe. So our cells become asphyxiated because even the same, though we're breathing, we can't use that oxygen. So if you survive the first few hours after a cyanide poisoning, then you'll probably survive no problem. That's not what we saw after this incident. We saw people dying for days and weeks. So methyl isosyanate initially causing damage to our lungs directly could have killed people outright with ARDS, but it also could have caused damage to the lungs that resulted in a continued inflammatory reaction in response to

that tissue damage. That is why you see deaths happening in a kind of more prolonged, delayed way. Right. It's like the lungs could not recover, continue to get inflamed, continue to fill up with. Exactly. Yeah. Even after that. But there is a second way that could also account for a lot of the damage that we see due

to mick, methyl isosyionate. And that is that it reacts with a bunch of other stuff inside of our cells as well. And this is where we disappointingly do not have all the answers. Mick after this event has now been shown to alter and inhibit the function of a number of different enzymes that are important for our life, like ATPase bound to our red blood cells, like to make ATP or break it to. down. It has been shown to impair cellular respiration in our mitochondria. It has been shown to interact with enzymes that end up increasing the coagulability of our blood within our vascular system. It has been shown to induce enzymes that activate our complement system, which then cause a lot more inflammation. And it's also thought that it could even in our cells result in the production

of hydrogen cyanide in our cells and then cause toxicity from hydrogen cyanide in that way. Oh, what? Yeah. It's also thought that it can conjugate to a substance that's found throughout our bodies, but in especially high concentrations in our lungs called glutathione. And that perhaps conjugation to that stabilizes it enough to cross over our alveoli and into our bloodstream and thereby have longer-term effects on our other organs as well. But we don't really know, like all of this is from animal model studies and cell level studies, like in vitro studies,

but we still don't really know what was happening in Bhopal during this leak, inside these human bodies, and thereafter. And we especially don't know the extent or mechanisms of the long-term effects of this. How could it do so much, Erin? I think largely because it is highly reactive. So it just is able to, depending on kind of what it's reacting with and what it's attaching itself to, it could have a really wide range of effects, right? It's terrifying. It's terrifying. I know. I know. And that's just kind of in the acute setting. Right. When it comes to the long-term effects, we really don't have a good handle on what they are. Ocular-wise, like I said, the one good news is that there seems to be minimal long-term damage in survivors in terms of blindness or vision loss.

Respiratory system-wise, however, there is significant evidence for chronic lung disease of all stripes. we see in survivors from this disaster a lot of chronic lung disease primarily of obstructive type. So symptoms similar to what you think of with COPD or asthma. And this was from data collected from survivors, especially in the first few months and years after the event. And it's thought that a large part of this damage is due to that initial. tissue damage that led to fibrosis in the lungs. Okay. And a really wide-ranging pattern of different types of this chronic lung disease.

More recent studies have shown increases in various cancers, including lung cancers. But the data is sparse, like really, really sparse. In terms of reproductive health, there is. a lot of evidence for long-term damage, both in those who were pregnant at the time of the incident or in people who were of reproductive age and capable of pregnancy at the time of the incident. There was increased rates of unsuccessful pregnancies for years thereafter and an increase in other gynecologic abnormalities like pelvic inflammatory disease, leukeria, which is like abnormal discharge and abnormalities in mencies. There's also evidence, though it's

sparse of long-term immunologic effects, including reductions in like cell-mediated immunity, but it's very unclear what kind of an effect this actually may have on people in terms of disease or risk of disease or risk of cancers, etc. Part of the reason that we have so little data on the long-term effects of this, there's a lot of reasons. But there was an organization which was set up in the years after this disaster that was called the Bhopal Gas Disaster Research Center. And they initially registered over 80,000 people who had been exposed to Mick during this incident and another like 15,000 or so people that had not been exposed in order to try and do longitudinal cohort studies of like what we might see in terms

of long-term effects. But several years later, by the time they actually started collecting data, they had already lost tens of thousands of people to follow up because they had moved or left or just perhaps died, who knows, lost a follow-up. And by 2010, only 16,000 people from that initial cohort remained, which is an 80% loss. Wow. So even though there's some data, it's really, really. difficult to draw any valid conclusions from this data because of how many people are not

represented. And even their initial cohort was a very small subset of people who were actually affected by this disaster. So while there is also some data that suggests increases in various quote, neurologic or psychiatric conditions. So this is anything from things like tremors or parisidias on the neurologic side, but also anxiety, depression, PTSD on the psychiatric side. We have an appalling lack of data on this in particular. There is so much data from other large natural disasters or man-made disasters such as this one of increase in risk of PTSD after a disaster, and we don't have data on that from this incident, which is a real, real disservice to individuals who are affected by this. So that's what we know or don't know about how this has played

out in the almost 40 years since this incident. Yeah. And when it comes to remediation, as you mentioned, Erin, it essentially has not happened at all. It's estimated that the cost, even decades ago, would have been in the tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and neither Dow Chemical nor the U.S. government nor the Indian governments had any interest in paying it. Despite the fact that studies since then have consistently shown significant amounts of contamination of soil and groundwater sources around the plant of a number of

incredibly problematic chemicals and heavy metals. One quote from a 2005 paper that I thought was really important when we think about this incident in the context of where it happened in the globe. I will quote, had compensation in Bhopal been paid at the same rate that asbestos victims were being awarded in U.S. courts, which side note, we all know is not enough, by defendants, including Union Carbide, the liability would have been greater than the $10 billion the company was worth and insured for in 1984. Oh, my gosh.

I mean, yeah. $10 billion, and they paid out, what, $470? $470 million. Yeah. And I remember reading something about like, oh, you know, it'll be this amount and we won't lose too much in the stocks. Like it'll be fine. We'll recover. Right.

Like it was a calculated decision. Yeah. Gross. I know. Politically, survivors and current residents have continued to fight with governmental bodies in India for decades now to do more about not just the after effects, but also. remembering and talking about this incident. Recently, there's been a push from the governmental side, apparently, to make some kind of memorial or museum at the site of the Union Carbide disaster. And survivors and survivor activists have really been having to fight way too hard

to be a part of this process, to ensure that whatever happens reflects their lived experience rather than something just put together by someone else with some nefarious end goal of like driving dark tourism or like what is the end goal of just making what is the yeah why yeah exactly what is the message what is the lesson especially without remediation that still hasn't happened right like build a museum on the site that still has has dangerous chemical contamination. Yes. How does, like, okay.

Yeah, it's, it doesn't make any sense. I will post a couple of papers that were very interesting in looking more at the like current political landscape surrounding Bhopal because of this. So that is what we are renaming the Union Carbide incident. The 1980, we have to specify because Union Carbide. 1984, Union Carbide Methyl Isis I inate leak that killed thousands. Tens of thousands. Yeah.

And continues to affect lives. Yeah. Yep. It's truly shocking that we didn't know about this in any detail, really, before doing this episode. We've kind of talked about there are many reasons why, and I think you're the quote that you included pretty strongly alludes to one of those reasons. Yeah, I think if this had been an incident that happened at the West Virginia plant, everyone would know about it. Everyone. And we've talked about corporate negligence that has happened in wealthier parts of the world,

but I don't think that there is any way that it could have been as ignored and Union Carbide could have gotten off as Scott Free as they did. And, That is unacceptable. Despicable. Yeah. I mean, and it's because it was this calculated decision. The people who were most affected in Bhopal tended to be the people who were of the lowest socioeconomic status. Right.

And they also had the least amount of power to fight this, you know, giant corporation. Right. And I think Union Carbide used that to their advantage. Yeah. When the 1984 Union Carbide gas explosion poisoning happened, it made headline news around the world, as it rightly should have done. But maybe because Union Carbide suppressed information, maybe because it happened quote unquote over there, maybe because it happened to people. who were poor, it didn't stay headline news or make it into textbooks the way that it should have done. And maybe that's my personal bias, being born after this happened and not having

heard about it except for like a couple of years ago. Right. I mean, I think reading through the papers that I read through, it's not just us. Like it does seem to have fallen out of the collective consciousness in a way that is unacceptable. Absolutely. Yeah. So if you'd like to learn a lot more about this, we've got sources for you. We do. I want to shout out one in particular, and that is the book Five Past Midnight in Bhopal,

the epic story of the world's deadliest industrial disaster. And that's by Dominique LaPierre and Javier Morrow. and I have a few papers that talk more specifically about methyl isosyanate or about seven, but I also wanted to shout out a book that I'm like actually right in the middle of. I haven't finished it yet. And it's a fiction book called Animals People by Indra Sina. And this is based on this 1984 disaster. And it's a great book so far.

I have a number of sources, many of which, disappointingly, are very old because it was hard to find new recent sources. Yeah. But a few really good ones that I used included one from 2005 called the Bhopal Disaster of 1984 in the Bulletin of Science, Technology, and Society. And also a slightly newer one from 2009 called Bhopal Gas Tragedy Review on Clinical and Experimental Findings after 25 years. There are a bunch of other ones, both older from the late 80s, early 90s, and some updated ones as well. You can find the list of the sources from this episode and every single one of our episodes on our website. This podcast will kill you.com under the episodes tab.

Thank you to Blubnobio for providing the music for this episode and all of our episodes. Thank you to Leona Squillachi for the amazing audio editing. Thank you to exactly right. And thank you to you, listeners. we hope that you enjoyed this episode. Did you already know this? Was this brand new to you? Please let us know.

And a special thank you, as always, to our incredible, generous, lovely patrons. We love you. So much. So much. So much. Well, until next time, wash your hands. You filthy animals.

Hello, it's me, Anna Sinfield, the host of the girlfriends. I'm back with more one-on- of interviews with some truly kick-ass women on The Girlfriend's Spotlight. I'm going to climb this. Is badness hereditary? Let's see how we can stop killing. I'm not too intimidated by her.

What are you talking about? Listen to the Girlfriend Spotlight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Dirty Rush, the truth about sorority life, the good, the bad, and the sisterhood. With your host, me Gia Judice, Daisy Kent, and Jennifer Fessler. The reality of Greek life has been a mystery

for those outside the sorority circles until now. Is it really a supportive sisterhood that's simply misunderstood? Or is there something more scandalous happening on campuses across the country? Let's get dirty. Listen to Dirty Rush on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Law and Order SVU is the great equalizer. Everyone's watched it. presidents, stoners, and definitely your mom. On That's Messed Up, we recap SVU and talk to cast members like Kelly Giddish, aka Rollins. I was in a casino once, and they were like, what are you doing here? You can't be in a casino, Rollins. You can't do that.

And I was like, no, no, I'm not the one with a gambling problem. It's murder, comedy, and behind the scenes tea, sometimes about iced tea. Open your free IHeart Radio app, search That's Messed Up, and listen now. I don't know.